RUSH: Let me tell you what I was doing last night. I was working feverishly in more ways than one preparing this program. The television is always on but it’s off to my right. I don’t see the television when I’m facing the computer and I never have the sound on, because it’s irritating to me. I watch television with closed-captioning so I don’t hear what is said. Occasionally when I was in the middle of working I’d take a glance to the right, and it’s eight o’clock, nine o’clock at night, and I’d look to the right at the screen and I had MSNBC on, I had Fox on, I had CNN on, I’d be going back and forth. I think at this point I was looking at MSNBC and they’re still going on and on and on and on and on about all these traffic problems in Houston and they’ve got videotape. Now, it’s eight o’clock at night, I know that’s seven o’clock Central time, but it’s almost dark at seven o’clock everywhere now, and I’m looking and they’re playing tape that’s obviously from the middle of the day, the broiling sun with half of those interstate highways still not open yet and a traffic jam on the lanes that were open. They’re doing a big story on the incompetence of the local leaders down there, the mayor and the governor, for not opening all those lanes. So again, I don’t have the sound up but I’m looking at the pictures, isn’t this misleading? Why don’t you show us live pictures now? I want to know if the problem’s been fixed. So finally, at nine o’clock I switch over to Fox, to Hannity & Colmes, and guess what? I saw some live pictures, actually saw taillights on the cars, it was night, that’s what I should have seen. Looked to me some of the lanes had been open. So I’m watching all afternoon and I’m listening, reading some of the closed-captioning and everybody is just crying over spilt milk and trying to once again drum up all of this incompetence because of the lack of ability of getting people out of Houston. I recall what I said yesterday. We’re not made for this. We don’t make the interstate highway system to evacuate two million people all going in the same direction. It’s just not possible. And by the time you put that many people on a highway system no matter how large, you cannot ignore the fact that the normal ebb and flow of life is going to happen. You’re going to have people have to go to bathroom, you’re going to have people get sick, you’re going to have crying kids. But the infrastructure that’s necessary to deal with all these things is not there in your car or on the highway, as you’re stuck. So the idea that this can go smooth as clockwork, and that when it doesn’t, just boggles the mind, the standard. I would love to see some of these experts in the media go do this stuff themselves. It’s easy for these people to sit here in moral judgment and competence judgment on everybody, let them go try this.
Now, one of the problems I think they had was that you’ve got a huge, long interstate system, and it’s not just as easy as pie to say, “Okay, the other lanes in the southbound direction, we’re going to open them up.” You’ve gotta go to every on ramp on the southbound side and you’ve got to block it. If you get one or two cars heading the wrong way against an army of people going the other way, you’ve got a huge big problem. “Well they should have done this at first.” Well, they never told the whole city to evacuate. If they would have, there’s a way of doing things. Do you remember when you were in skrool, or for those of you who have been to weddings, just been to them, we’re not talking about if you’ve been the bride and groom. But you know how they get people out of a church at a wedding or wherever it takes place, they do it by rows. When I was in school, grade school and so forth, we had all these drills if the Russians ever nuked us, and the exit plan at my school was those closest to the disaster moved first. When they’re out of the way, then you move people behind them so you have a steady stream.
Now, I don’t know if they did that in Houston, but the technique then would have been, “Okay, this part of town, you leave, and the next part of town, you leave at this point in time.” The problem with that is you’d have all kinds of people cheating the system trying to get in line early. So they’re doing the best they can and yet they’re doing it well in advance. The idea that we can take a city, two million people, put them on an interstate highway system and have a normal, every day come as you go day in America on that highway, whose expectations are these? It’s a bunch of people that have no connection to the real world. It’s a bunch of people who are insulated and who expect that government is going to be flawless each and every time it operates, and then when a Republican is in charge of the government whether it’s the federal government, a state government, or a city government, and it doesn’t work, bammo, here they come. If we’d only had some compassionate liberal running the show, why none of this would have happened. It just offends my sensibilities and it offended my sensibilities all night last night as I’m watching television they’re running videotape of daylight problems trying to pass it off as though it’s still going on.
Now, I haven’t had a whole lot of time to watch this morning. Are those traffic tie-ups still taking place? Are there still big, long traffic jams? Some — okay, so it’s not as bad? That’s why I’m not seeing as much of it on TV, because it’s not as bad as it was. We had this horrible accident with that school bus. How many senior citizens on that bus, 20? Oh, 45 on the bus, and it just blew up, they think it was somebody on board had an oxygen tank to help them breathe, and some fire started, bam, that was it. You think, how in the world can that happen? Well, it happens. You know, if we were just now arriving, if we were Adam and Eve — no, forget Adam and Eve. If God wanted to create the world today the EPA would not let him put oxygen on the planet because it’s so dangerous. I think that these kind of things unfortunately when you start moving these large numbers of people, they happen, and here the blame game starts. And look at this. Here they go again, the Associated Press: No way out, many poor stuck in Houston. “Wilma Skinner would like to scream at the officials of this city. If only they would pick up their phones. ‘I done called for a shelter, I done called for help. There ain’t none. No one answers,’ she said, standing in blistering heat outside a check-cashing store that had just run out of its main commodity.” Which would be money for those of you in Rio Linda. “‘Everyone just says, “Get out, get out.” I’ve got no way of getting out. And now I’ve got no money.’ With Hurricane Rita breathing down Houston’s neck, those with cars were stuck in gridlock trying to get out. Those like Skinner – poor, and with a broken-down car – were simply stuck, and fuming at being abandoned, they say. ‘All the banks are closed and I just got off work,’ said Thomas Visor, holding his sweaty paycheck as he, too, tried to get inside the store, where more than 100 people, all of them black or Hispanic, fretted in line. ‘This is crazy. How are you supposed to evacuate a hurricane if you don’t have money? Answer me that?'” It’s a good question, cash is king out there. Cash is king, especially the poor people who don’t have credit cards, cash is it. Without cash you can’t get along. The last I saw the government is not running the check cashing store. So here we go again. It’s the poor, the poor are stuck in Houston. It’s the same, same page, same template, same news cycle, same exact view of things, thank you media.
END TRANSCRIPT